Our Core Projects

GRAD - Graduate Retention and Development Programme


In January 2010 Northern Architecture in partnership with Plus 3 Architecture and with support from Newcastle and Northumbria universities launched the GRAD project with the aim of assisting recent architecture graduates who find themselves un- or under-employed.



The project enables the GRADs to continue to gain relevant experience, work with their peers and develop their management and other core skills. In addition, the project aims to retain creative, qualified graduates within the region and give them opportunities to engage with the development opportunities in the local area.

We currently have about 15 GRADs involved in the project and they are all giving their time for free. Plus Three Architecture are hosting the GRAD team within their offices and Northern Architecture and representatives from both universities are providing guidance, assistance and support. Both Northumbria and Newcastle universities have made a financial contribution to get the project off the ground and to enable the GRADs to purchase materials and other items to help them realize projects.



The GRADs are currently working to attract and develop projects that will enable them to use their creative approaches and design skills to visualise new and alternative approaches to development sites and other notional sites or opportunities. The intention is not for them to be doing pieces of work that would otherwise go to professional practices, rather that local authorities, developers, regeneration organisations and community organisations could ask them to work on visualisation projects that are not covered by any budgets or to scope out opportunities that might then form the basis for future development briefs.



In the future, we may be approaching other practices to host further groups of GRADs as following on from graduation this summer, there may well be a great deal more demand for this project. If you would like to express an interest in doing this, please do contact Carol on 0191 2602191 or by email.



The current GRAD team have renamed themselves ArchiGRAD and have launched a website of their own, click here to visit this site.



North East Festival of Architecture

The North East Festival of Architecture (NEFA) is Northern Architecture's flagship public engagement event. We have successfully run NEFA on an annual basis since 2008, following on from 11 years involvement as the regional coordinator for the national Arts Council England funded Architecture Week. 

When Architecture Week came to an end in 2007, Northern Architecture was encouraged by our core funders and partners to develop a regional festival to celebrate local architecture and design of spaces and places and to provide activities and events for local people to learn about and engage with their built environment.

The general aim of the festival is to engage local people in celebrating the architecture, places and spaces in their locality and to give them opportunities to learn more about the places, their design and the design process and how they came to be. 

NEFA is only made possible by the broad range of supporters, partners and funders that we attract to financially support the festival and also to develop and deliver festival events.

NEFA 2011

Northern Architecture has not attracted the funding we had hoped for the North East Festival of Architecture, which has meant that we have decided not to run NEFA in 2011.

NEFA 2012

We now looking towards NEFA 2012, which we hope will return in June 2012 with a possible sports theme, to tie into the Olympics, which we hope will raise the level of support to enable us to run the scale and quality of event that we believe the North East Festival of Architecture deserves.

We continue to help develop, deliver and promote many of our own and partners events through the Northern Architecture website and events programme see our Whats Happening section.  If you have an event idea that you would like to work with us on, please do get in touch.

If you are interested in supporting the North East Festival of Architecture in 2012, please download a sponsorship proposal here and for future event partnerships please email cait@northernarchitecture.com

Individuals, companies and organisations may become Friends of the Festival for a donation of £100, £250 or £500. A number of smaller donations would make a significant contribution towards enabling this important celebration of the region's architecture to take place.

A variety of larger sponsorship opportunities are also available between £1,000 to £10,000. 

 

For more information about the North East Festival of Architecture please visit the NEFA website.

 

For future NEFA updates follow @NEFA_2011 on twitter or join the North East Festival of Architecture group on facebook.